Mercedes F1 promotes Andrea Kimi Antonelli to replace Lewis Hamilton in 2025

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Mercedes will elevate 18-year-old driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli to Formula One in 2025, filling the seat left vacant by Lewis Hamilton’s departure to Ferrari.

The team made the announcement on Saturday ahead of the Italian Grand Prix. When the season begins in Melbourne in March, Antonelli will become the third-youngest driver to ever start a grand prix and the first Italian driver on the F1 grid full-time since Antonio Giovinazzi in 2021.

“Kimi has consistently shown the talent and speed needed to compete at the very top of our sport,” team principal Toto Wolff said. “We know it will be another big step up, but he has impressed us in his F1 testing this year and we will be supporting him every step of the way in the learning process.

“In George, he has an experienced team-mate from which he can learn and hone his craft. I am confident that both will contribute greatly as we continue to build momentum and fight at the front of the field.”

Antonelli participated in FP1 on Friday at Monza in George Russell’s car. It was a big moment for the Italian youngster, born three hours away in Bologna, but it was cut short by Antonelli’s dramatic spin and crash minutes into the session. The driver walked off under his own power and later participated in F2 qualifying.

Mercedes will compete in 2025 with Antonelli and George Russell, its youngest driver lineup since Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in 2015, who were both 28 at the time. The 2024 season has been Mercedes’ most successful since 2021, with three wins and four podiums in the first 15 races. Mercedes sits fourth in the constructors’ standings with 276 points.

The move to Mercedes’ F1 team completes a rapid ascent for Antonelli, who turned 18 last weekend. The son of touring car racer Marco Antonelli, he began his racing career at the age of seven in karting. His immediate success in the Italian national and European karting championships caught the attention of Mercedes, who signed him for their junior team in 2019. Antonelli’s talent was evident as he won championships in Italian F4 and ADAC F4 in 2022 and two Formula Regional series titles in 2023.

The immediate success prompted a move rarely seen in F1 drivers’ progression: instead of sending Antonelli to Formula Three in 2024, as it usually does with junior drivers who thrive in F4, Mercedes let Antonelli skip F3 and spend this season in Formula Two – considered the final step before a driver reaches F1. Antonelli’s F2 career got off to a slow start in a competitive field. But he has come on since the Imola feature race, with six top-10 finishes and two wins in the last 13 races.

Hamilton announced his 2025 departure to Ferrari in February, leaving a tantalizing seat open during a 2024 season with many drivers on expiring contracts. From the start, Antonelli seemed like a strong contender to replace Hamilton. In recent months, Antonelli has been testing old Mercedes F1 cars on tracks as a sort of audition progress in parallel with his F2 season.

By all accounts, those tests went very well. At the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in May, Mercedes technical director James Allison said he’d spoken to some engineers who had worked with Antonelli on the test and that the Italian had been “metronomic in his pace.”

By May, the FIA had received a request for Antonelli to receive dispensation for a super license required to take part in a grand prix weekend despite being under the minimum age of 18. This led to suggestions that Williams could draft Antonelli as a mid-season replacement for the struggling Logan Sargeant. Nothing came of the news, as Antonelli remained in F2 and turned 18 last weekend.

That Williams — who has a close relationship with Mercedes as a customer team — replaced Sargeant with Franco Colapinto this week, after considering the services of Liam Lawson and Mick Schumacher but not Antonelli, seemed to indicate further that an Antonelli announcement at Mercedes was imminent.

(Top photo: HOCH ZWEI)